Leslye Headland Reveals Which Major Anime Influenced ‘The Acolyte’

‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ is the latest release in the franchise, and so far most controversial. The show was both review-boosted and review-bombed by fans and critics alike, so it’s really hard to form an objective opinion regarding the overall state of the show.

The show did have its issues, however, most of them revolved around pacing, dialogues, scripts, and character development, which we analyzed as the weeks went by.

Even before the show aired Leslye Headland discussed various influences that helped her craft such a unique Star Wars story. Wuxia, Samurai, and The Matrix are just some of them. In her latest interview with Collider, Headland revealed one more influence, one that comes in the form of one of the most notable anime of all time, Cowboy Bebop.

I love all of the different influences that you have talked about throughout these three interviews that we’ve gotten to do, like Crimson Peak and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Are there any other visual or story influences that you had when creating this? That’s something I personally love, when you can see the fingerprints of different stories.

HEADLAND: Yes. Shinichirō Watanabe. He is the creator of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. Those were big references, not visually but tonally. Especially, Cowboy Bebop bounces back and forth between Spike’s backstory, which is incredibly tragic and heart-wrenching, and then his fun buoyancy when they do the episodic episodes. He feels like a Han Solo-coded character. So, totally, those were references.

Headland also explained how Bram Stoker’s Dracula influenced the currently teased romance between Osha and Qimir, a relationship that is currently a huge motivator for the fans to ask season 2 of the show:

With Osha and The Stranger’s relationship, Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola — which I know is different from the book — that film is one of my favorite films. Again, it was to have someone that was so scary, to have somebody that we clearly see is a bad guy, and he’s doing bad things, and Lucy is dying, and then to have this deep connection with Mina, where you see a totally different side of him. One of the things that really works about that movie is that there is this past life, soulmate, reincarnation idea for this character that has been alive for centuries, and he is just shocked to find her.

There’s also a moment later in the movie where she agrees to drink his blood, and he says, “I can’t let you do this. It’s basically gonna damn your soul.” And she has the agency and makes the decision to make this bond between the two of them. Actually, in earlier drafts, The Stranger had a line from that movie, which is, “I have crossed oceans of time to find you.” A lot of Gothic romances were referenced — Jane Eyre, Rochester and sort of the Byronic hero for those two.

I gotta admit, ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ is definitely not my favorite show in the franchise, but seeing al these influences that inspired Headland is extremely awesome, especially the gothic ones that I would have never thought to mix with space opera.

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